As Barack Obama has described his campaign for the Democratic nomination over the last few months, the silly season has arrived in the NBA.
Is every team going to fire its coach? The teams who have made coaching changes:
Charlotte Bobcats: First-year coach Sam Vincent was replaced by Larry Brown. Michael Jordan is a disaster when it comes to hiring coaches and His Airness might be a nightmare to work for. Vincent was dumped because the "nomadic" Larry Brown was available. (When Brown was hired, nomadic was the word used by many writers to describe the insufferable Larry Brown.) How many front offices has Larry Brown pissed off?
Brown has coached 23 seasons in the NBA and has won one NBA championship. Do you think Sam Vincent could do that? Michael, bring some talent to the Bobcats and you might get some wins. Oh, I forgot, Jordan and Brown have a Tar Heels connection.
Chicago Bulls: The Bulls have fired two coaches this year. First, g.m. John Paxson sacked Scott Skiles during the regular season and then Paxson canned interim coach Jim Boylan at the the end of the year. Of course, Paxson bears no responsibility for the team's lack of success with his Kobe Bryant trade talks plaguing the team through training camp, and having the Bryant trade rumors extend into the early part of the regular season. It was a huge distraction to the young players on the Bulls.
Paxson's 2007 first-round draft choice, Joakim Noah, did a nice job of fitting into the team's chemistry. (If you're not down with the NBA scene, that would be an example of sarcasm. Noah provided the Bulls with a Shannen Doherty effect.) Paxson added Drew Gooden and Larry Hughes to the roster by trading the unhappiest Bull, Ben Wallace. Scott Skiles and Wallace had a difficult relationship, so Paxson trades Wallace after he cans Skiles. Overall, Paxson did a great job of Pearl Harboring his team.
Two names mentioned for the Bulls coaching vacancy are Avery Johnson and Mike D'Antoni. Does Mike D'Antoni really want to work for another Jordanaire?
Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban cans another coach. Hey Mark, take a look at your dog crap roster that you put together. Jason Kidd is a shadow of his former self, but still the same coach/g.m. killer that he's always been. Just ask Byron Scott and Rod Thorn.
Cuban made the decision to build the team's future around Dirk Nowitzki and jettisoned Steve Nash. Was that the correct decision? Nowitzki is never going to be a physical player, but add someone to the roster who will clean the glass. The Mavericks need to add a young Charles Oakley who will do what it takes to get the job done. Avery Johnson or John Wooden wasn't going to win a championship with that team or get past Chris Paul's Hornets in the first round. Would Byron Scott rather have Chris Paul or Jason Kidd on his roster?
Apparently every team in the NBA has the players to win a championship. The Mavs are negotiating with Rick Carlisle to be their next coach. Will see if Carlisle can get Dirk to rebound?
Miami Heat: Riles! What a surprise that the egomanical Gordon Gekko resembling Pat Riley has decided to resign as coach with the crappy team that he's put together. Shaq was right for calling him out for acquiring Ricky Davis. Ricky Davis is radioactive waste in basketball terms.
Riley has named his long-time protege Erik Spoelstra to coach the Heat next year. I have a feeling Eric is coming cheap, which is very agreeable to Heat owner Micky Arison. Will Riles Stan Van Gundy Spoelstra if the Heat start to win? What Pat Riley did to Stan Van Gundy was unforgivable and Van Gundy has done a pretty decent job with the Magic this year.
Riles will be remembered as a Hall of Fame winner, but also as a quitter.
Milwaukee Bucks: Larry Krystkowiak was fired by recently hired Bucks g.m. John Hammond at the conclusion of the regular season. Hammond did not hire Krystkowiak, he did not put together the Bucks roster, and decided to go in a new direction. Larry Harris was fired as g.m. in March and can be blamed for taking Andrew Bogut with the overall first pick in the 2005 draft. (Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy! - Joe Hachem) Harris gave crazy Joe Hachem money to Michael Redd and made the Travis Ford for Charlie Villanueva trade - not that point guards mean anything in today's NBA.
Hammond decided to hire Scott Skiles as coach to add some grit and toughness. For laughs, take a look at the Bucks roster and do a toughness check. Skiles might have to suit up. Did you know Skiles fought Shaq at a Magic practice? The Intensity Lives On!
Serial phone caller and former Indiana University head coach Kelvin Sampson has been hired as an assistant. Sampson needs the money to pay his cell bill.
New York Knicks: Donnie Walsh fired someone and that name will not be mentioned. Those who speaketh that name are eternally cursed.
Names rumored for the job are: Mark "Action" Jackson, Mike D'Antoni, Avery Johnson
Mark Jackson - That would involve splitting up the announcing team of Jackson, Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy. That's the only negative that I can see.
Mike D'Antoni - D'Antoni Ball to the Big Apple. I could handle that.
Avery Johnson - Avery Johnson would drive Stephen Marbury crazy - how is that a negative?
Phoenix Suns: Coach and g.m. are experiencing philosophical differences. D'Antoni wants to leave and g.m. Steve Kerr doesn't seem to be resistant to the idea.
If you take a look at the Suns roster, the team is not constructed with players who can thrive in D'Antoni's system. Grant Hill was not a good addition to the Suns. Hill is not a legitimate three-point threat. Going into the season, the Suns needed shooters. What's the point of assembling a team around Steve Nash if you don't have three-point threats?
Were the Suns ever talking to Philly about Kyle Korver? I know they signed Gordon Giricek during the regular season, but Korver would have been a better addition. I know Korver can't play D, but the guy is lights out from the outside.
Oddly, Philly traded Korver for Utah's Giricek. The Sixers promptly waived Giricek and then found out they had no three-point shooters in the playoffs. I'd like to discuss that trade with Sixers g.m. Ed Stefanski.
It was finally time to broach the issue of the one roster move Stefanski has orchestrated, the Kyle Korver trade. I asked him to walk me through the deal, beginning to end, and he had some interesting things to say. Basically, when he took over he had a couple of options, either make some changes or stick with the status quo. In his own words, "The status quo was not an option."
I think this was the key part of the interview, because we got to the root of Stefanski's blueprint for rebuilding this team. "The ultimate goal every year when you start this thing is to win an NBA championship. If that isn't your goal, you shouldn't be in the game." With this goal in mind, he went on to talk about Korver, "Kyle Korver is a good player, a very good shooter, I'll say. A very good shooter. On a team that doesn't have a low-post presence, he isn't as good of shooter as he would be on a team with one. He's not going to get as many open looks on a team without a low-post presence because if I'm coaching against them I just tell my guy, well just cover Korver, don't worry about helping out. If you're coaching against us (the Sixers) who do you have to double that's going to leave Korver open?" The logic is that Kyle Korver is a luxury for the Sixers at this point. A complete, playoff team needs a shooter like him, they need a guy who can hit the open three. On a team like the Sixers, without all of the basic pieces in place, that finishing touch is almost wasted. That makes Korver much more valuable to a team like Utah than he was to the Sixers. That's the on-the-court reasoning, the bigger picture is what the Sixers got in return for him.
"We're in a position right now where we want to go into the Summer with cap space. Right now, we're at a low of $10M in cap space, a high of $12M depending on where the league number comes in. We are under the cap and our options are much, much more liberal than they would be if we were over the cap. We can use this money either to sign a free agent, or to trade, with a player or without a player, to another team in a situation where that team doesn't have to take money on. If you look around the league, there are always teams that are unhappy with what went on. They're spending a lot of money on their players, and you know, it's just not working so let's see if we can get rid of a guy or two. We'll be situated in the Summer so that if an opportunity like this arises, we can seize that opportunity. We feel that it's really important that with the team we have, it's crucial that we have this flexibility. We also got extra value in the future draft pick."
The logic here is that a shooter of Korver's caliber, while important to a complete team, is less valuable than the basic needs. If you can give up the shooter to get the star, or in this case, the low-post presence, then you can get another shooter down the line. It's worth noting here that Stefanski didn't try to sell us a line. He didn't say something like, well we got Giricek back so we didn't lose that much on the court. In fact, he didn't even mention Giricek by name. The haul here was the cap space first and the draft pick second, end of story. I give him credit for this frank appraisal of the situation. At the same time, it must be said that while I'm in favor of the Korver deal, I would've preferred to send a guy like Willie Green or Rodney Carney the other way in a deal that would've created cap space. Korver is an asset, that's the reason the Sixers got such a haul for him, but losing an asset does have a finite cost when you're trying to rebuild a team.
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The silly season in the NBA can best be summed up by this eighties classic:
